


Eating and sleeping and fighting and loving and —

by Daedinwen



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Animal neglect discussed but not depicted, Bottle feeding puppies, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Foggy Nelson & Karen Page Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Matt & Foggy being very unhelpful friends, Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson Friendship, Matt Murdock & Karen Page friendship, Mutual Pining, Post-Daredevil season 3, Puppies, Sleep Deprivation, Spoilers for Daredevil Season 3, Thai Food, though they're butting heads a bit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 21:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17394404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daedinwen/pseuds/Daedinwen
Summary: Karen finds herself in over her head as surrogate mom to a litter of puppies.  Cue Frank to the rescue.





	Eating and sleeping and fighting and loving and —

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HeartonFire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartonFire/gifts).



> Gift for the lovely HeartonFire who gave me a lovely excuse to watch many videos of baby puppies.   
>  This is my first posted fic. Tags & rating will update as it goes. If I miss something that needs tagging, please let me know!

Golden light kisses Karen’s face as the last light of the setting sun shines in her window and she dreams vaguely about soft blues, greys and tans with white socks and tiny, fat tails.  She’s drifting peacefully, away from a chattering sound in the distance, luxuriating in a blessed moment of respite when a harsh knock near her head jolts her awake with a gasp, just in time to the catch the tail end of Foggy ranting about something to do with “billable hours.”  She groans as she sits up, the stark overhead lighting in Nelson, Murdock & Page shooting needles into her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Foggy, I _know_ , I’m just so _tired_ …” she whines, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes in frustration.  Blocking the light dulls the sharp pain, leaving only the constant headache that dogs her day and night.

“I know Karen, that’s why I’m worried about you.  I still don’t understand why you have to be the one taking care of these dogs.”  Despite the abrupt wake up call (not the first this week, or even today), his face is drawn in sympathy and legitimate concern, and not just for the checking account of the law office, though one of his favorite lamentations since their first week back together is the decrease in wages and financial security from his position at Hogarth, Chao, and Benowitz.

Karen groans, rubbing her eyes as she rocks back in her desk chair.  “ _Because,_ Foggy.  The vets and shelters are all overflowing after the fighting ring bust.  When I asked them about foster homes, they laughed in my face.  Apparently, there’s a waiting list a hundred dogs long on a good day, and my investigation made the whole thing a lot worse.”  She’s been wiping non-existent grit out of her eyes for days.  She wants to cry but she thinks it would come out as crystals.  “No one else will take these puppies and frankly, I can’t say I blame them.  If I could just get some help, someone to split the shifts with me, I could probably sleep through the night.”  Karen drops her hands in her laps, looking pleadingly at the lawyer hovering in front of her desk.

As if on cue, Matt steps hesitantly through the doorway between their offices.  Karen’s bloodshot eyes turn to him expectantly.  She knows now that there’s no need to clue him in on the conversation he’s just walked into.  He has no problem hearing through adjacent walls.  She’s not sure she’ll ever quite understand how he knows they’re both looking at him as if to say, _Yeah, Murdock, you’re up all night anyways._

Matt smiles in that way he has that’s somehow both apologetic and chiding.  “We both know why I’m unavailable at night, and we don’t have hours to spare if we’re going to keep the firm afloat this time.”  Karen deflates at the declination, even though she knows in the back of her mind how awkward it would have been to split custody of puppies with her…whatever Matt was.  She didn’t know if you could call someone an “ex” when you never really got off the ground in the first place.  It speaks to her desperation that she didn’t even hesitate to ask.

She turns pleading eyes to her other friend.  “Foggy?”

“Karen, you know I love you and I would do anything for you” – and he’s not lying, but — “but Marci is deathly allergic to dogs.  She’d kill me if I came home all…dandery.”  He grimaces, waving his fingers as if to indicate the mysterious presence of the allergen in question.

Karen’s mind may be fogged from her sleep deprivation, but she’s still sharp enough to detect a half-truth when she hears one.  Her eyes narrow in suspicion.  “Wasn’t she talking about getting a shih tzu the other day?”

Foggy shakes his head.  “Different thing.  They’re hypoallergenic.”

Karen purses her lips.  “I read somewhere that no dogs are actually hypoallergenic, they just shed less.”

Foggy raises his hands defensively.  “It’s entirely possible I misheard her and what she actually said was that her wardrobe was deathly allergic to dogs.  Either way, the end result is still going to be my death if I show up full of dog hair, which, by the way, I have a keen interest in avoiding until absolutely necessary.  Unlike some people I know,” he finishes with a pointed look at Matt, the latest jab in a never-ending argument.

“It’s for the greater good, Foggy,” Matt replies wearily, as though he’s uttered this same retort thousands of times already.  Foggy is undaunted.

“Baby puppies are part of the greater good!  Much safer, too.  You don’t hear about too many people losing fights with puppies.”  Matt sighs, shifting his weight gingerly.  His side is still very sore from a few nights ago, even if he would not classify what transpired as a loss, exactly.  He opens his mouth to tell Foggy exactly that – again – but before he can do so, Karen groans.

“No, only my beauty sleep!”  Her lament is muffled through the hands over her face.

“C’mon Karen.  You don’t need it anyways.”  Karen drops her hands and glances up at Matt without raising her head.  She can only muster a partial smile, briefly, in response.  She knows he’s probably just trying to lighten the mood, but things between them make territory like that still feel weird. 

Luckily Foggy is there to dispel the awkwardness.  To Matt, he says, “You know, I’ve always said you should get a dog!”

“Why would I get a dog, Foggy?” Karen can hear practically hear the well-trodden steps of this go around in Matt’s voice.

“It’s a classic pairing!  You know, blind guy?  Seeing eye dog?”  For a man who is technically blind, Matt Murdock has a real talent for employing silent looks as communication.  He doesn’t dignify Foggy’s suggestion with a response, leaving him to plow ahead in the gap in conversation.  “It’ll help with the cover story!  Fetch things for you, open the fridge, bring you a beer. Or an icepack.”  He hasn’t missed the stiff way Matt has been moving for a few days.  The dig cuts short Matt’s patience for the tired bit.

“I think we can all agree that I don’t need a dog, Foggy.”

“Maybe not a seeing eye dog, but dogs have other purposes.  Like a therapy dog!  Everybody’s got a therapy dog nowadays.”

“Are you implying that I need therapy, Foggy?”

“No, I’m sure it’s perfectly normal to grow up an orphan in a church with crazy sensitive senses and later get beaten to within an inch of your life on a daily basis.  Who could possibly need therapy from any of that.”  Karen thinks distantly that she’ll have to mop up the sarcasm dripping off Foggy’s words.

“I don’t think that’s the kind of therapy a dog can offer.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  I’ve read pet ownership is very therapeutic, and not just because they’re good listeners.  Man, who doesn’t need therapy nowadays…” Their bickering is comfortingly familiar as Karen drifts off again, her chin falling to her chest before Foggy cuts through the fog.

“Hey, aren’t you due for a feeding?”

Karen’s eyes pop open.  “Oh shit!  I gotta go.”  Blearily she scrambles to scoop up her laptop and files before dashing out the door, her mind still fogged from aborted sleep.  “I’ll, uh…have this research on your desk tomorrow morning,” she tells Matt, grabbing her coat.

“Noon is fine, Karen.  Get some rest.”

“I could if I had some help with these puppies!” she calls as she whisks out the door.

“Well, best of luck with that!”  Foggy’s words chase her down the hallway.  She loves Foggy, but right now he’s so helpful she could scream.

 

* * *

 

Karen rushes down the stairs and out the front door of their new office building, barely shrugging her coat on without dropping her things everywhere, only to be confronted with a very familiar hulking shape leaning against the lamppost opposite the door, waiting for her expectantly.  Frank looks good ( _he always looks good_ , a treacherous voice whispers).  His face is clean and free of cuts and bruises.  His hair is longer than his customary military fade, and the beard is back that makes him look disarmingly soft and huggable, though it’s better trimmed than his wild-man hipster look, framing his face in a way that is unfairly handsome.  He’s just in a coat and jeans and his combat boots – always those same old boots – nothing fancy, but he’s whole, clean, and healthy, looking at her with a glint of mischief in his eye, and the full effect makes him look like a million dollars.

It makes her so mad.

Of course Frank is alive and well and whole and _handsome_ while it’s been one shitshow after another lately, and she’s been _worried_ and she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him, and now he shows up out of fucking nowhere with his eyes and his beard and his _face_ and she can’t remember if she even combed her hair today or brushed her teeth and she’s running late and she does _not_ have time for this.

She’s still wrestling with her coat as she draws into earshot, but she pants out a “Hey” and gets a “Hey” back, as if this is all normal and they do this every day.  She can’t even look at him.  “Walk with me, I’m running late,” she says as she turns sharply in the direction of her apartment, not throwing her arms around him like they itch to, not kissing his blood-free and bruise-free face like it’s begging to be kissed.  She receives some grim satisfaction when he falls into step just behind her like the good soldier he is.  Was.

They’re halfway down the block before she lights into him, lowly, so the surrounding crowd doesn’t hear.  “So you disappear up an elevator shaft half-dead and I don’t hear a word from you, but I write an article about a dog-fighting ring and you’re here the next day?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about ma’am.  Name’s Pete, Pete Castiglione.  Big fan.  Just wanted to inquire about the dogs.”  Oh, apparently he’s in a good mood.  Isn’t that nice.  She’s glad one of them is.

“I’m trying not to be offended, _Pete_ , but you’re not making it easy,” she grits out, refusing to look at him.  She doesn’t see Frank duck his head, but she can feel it, his every movement vibrating through her.  She wonders distantly if this is how Matt “sees,” how he can stand it.

“Been trying to stay out of your hair,” Frank says, contrite.  “But then I saw you coming in late for work, skipping out early, going home for lunch.  Thought you might need a little help with something.”  And there’s the mischief back again.  They stop at a crosswalk, waiting for the light.  She rounds on him.

“You’ve been spying on me?”

Frank looks uncomfortable, almost self-conscious, looking away and shifting his weight, hands stuffed in his pockets.  “Just making sure you get around safe, that nobody else is tracking your routine.”  So he’d been around, _in town_ , long enough to know her routine, watching her every day, but never found the chance to say hi and let her know he was okay.  She was so sick of men in her life prioritizing her supposed protection over actually being there for her like real friends would be.

“I can take care of myself, _Pete_ ,” she grits out.

Frank looks pointedly at the bags under her eyes, letting his gaze trail up over her flyaway hair and down over her barely-on coat and half-closed bag, silently indicating the general disarray of her normally kempt appearance.  “Uh-huh, looks like you’re doin’ a real bang up job of it.”  Karen shivers.  It’s colder today than she thought it would be.  She forgot to check the weather before running out the door.

The light changes.  She takes off across the crosswalk, Frank maddeningly right at her 8 o’clock without breaking a sweat.  She fumes silently for another block before her sluggish mind lights on something else to pick at.

“So how are you Pete, now?  Gonna tell me the story behind that?”

“Maybe.  Gonna tell me the last time you got a full night’s sleep?”  She looks at him, exasperated.

“How do you…”

“Got bags under your eyes bigger than my old Marine duffel.  I’m guessing it was before that dog ring bust, right?”  Karen shakes her head at him impatiently.  There was time when she valued his ability to see things so keenly.  She’s trying to remember why.  “That one story that came with some homework?” he pushes.  “Hungry barking homework that don’t sleep through the night?”

Karen stops, pursing her lips at him, sizing him up.

“Fine.  You wanna see them?”

Frank’s face lights up, his eyes going big and soft.  “Can I?”

 

* * *

 

There’s a faint squeaky toy sound drifting into the hallway when they approach her door, a chorus of barely audible yips and whines.  Her earlier burst of anger had already ebbed by the time they made their way up the stairs, making way for the shaky exhaustion that has been her new baseline for weeks, but the realization that she’s even later than she thought causes panic to flood into the remaining space.

“Shit, they’re crying already!  Dammit!”

She tries hurriedly to unlock the door, fumbling with her keys in her haste.  She fails the first two times, first trying the wrong key, then picking the right key but losing hold of it before she can slip it in the lock, what remaining nerves she had completely frazzled by Frank’s unexpected appearance, the first since that intense moment they shared before he had disappeared again, since before all she had to trace him were vague police reports and heart-sinking headlines about the Punisher of Hell’s Kitchen maybe finally being dead this time, despite coroner’s reports and morgue records that just didn’t match up.  And of course he had to show up now, when she hadn’t slept a full night in weeks, first because she couldn’t let go of the bone that led the fighting ring bust, worrying it in her off hours and into the night so she could fit it around her Nelson, Murdock and Page workload, then later because puppies apparently didn’t have any respect for adult human circadian rhythms.  They were adorable, but she was starting to question anyone who willingly took on motherhood if this was anything approaching what it was like.

Finally the key slides in the lock, the lock turns, and Karen almost cries with relief.  It’s bad enough to look like she couldn’t even open her own door in front of Frank, let alone take care of eight unweaned puppies.  She leads him down the hall, the déjà vu of it slamming her in the face: turn on the light, coat over the couch, Frank trailing behind, backpack over one shoulder, a booming presence even in silence, casually filling the whole room.  She’d been angry at him then, too, but relieved he was alive, the threat of death palpable and suffocating after they watched Midland Circle collapse on top of Matt.  Now she is angry, and relieved, for the same reasons, because for better or worse that is her life now, but also a struck wire of tension, not ready to let Frank see her this close to her wits’ end, but not so reassured of his safety that she is ready to let him out of her sight.

She hurries across to the kitchen, past the squirming pile of empty bellies in a rainbow of soft blue-greys, beiges, browns, and tuxedos where the coffee table used to be. Frank drifts to a halt beside it, squatting down to get a closer look at the stocky little pitbull mixes, all round heads and sleepy, barely opened eyes, cooing soothingly to them.

“Hey!  Hey, babies.  How ya doin’?  Shh shh shh shh, your mom’s getting your stuff, it’s comin’.”  Karen’s jittering stomach does an extra flop at how gentle his voice is, at the sound of “mom” coming from his lips, referring to her.  “Jesus, they’re small.” He turns and calls the last to Karen as she grabs a pitcher out of the fridge and shakes it.

Karen sighs.  “Yeah.  The vet said they might be a little behind, if the mom wasn’t putting out enough milk.  It’s a miracle they didn’t just starve to death.”  She grabs a bottle from the top of the pile in the dish drainer and holds it up, eyeballing the level of formula as she pours it.

“What happened to the mom?”

“Those shitheads had so many dogs they didn’t need to care about the ones who got hurt.”  She clumsily tries to screw the cap on the bottle, drops it on the counter, and scoops it back up with a curse.  “When I found her, her front left paw was badly injured and the wound was festering.  They’re not sure if she’ll get to keep it, or how much she’ll have to lose.”  Karen turns to the drying rack, digging to the bottom for the spare bottle, upsetting a small avalanche back onto the pile in the sink.  She continues as she fills the second bottle.  “But it doesn’t matter for the puppies, they can’t feed from her with all the drugs she’s on now, even if she was at full milk production, which she’s not.  They’re not sure how long it’s been since she had adequate nutrition, but it was probably before her injury.”

“Jesus.”  Frank’s face is drawn in a disapproving frown when she glances at him, one puppy mouthing at his outstretched finger hopefully.  It – _she,_ the little grey & white one is a girl – figures out pretty quickly that no milk is forthcoming and turns away with a disappointed wail, toddling shakily in search of nourishment.  Karen dimly becomes aware that her fingers are numb around the bottles, already freezing from walking home in the cold snap she didn’t wear gloves for.  Dammit, she almost forgot to warm the formula!  She shakes her head at herself, disgusted, as she uncaps the bottles again and pops them in the microwave.  How many more things can she mess up today?

She sighs.  “Yeah, I hope the bastards rot in jail for a good long time.”  The microwave dings.  She takes the bottles out, tests the temperature on her forearm: not too warm, not too cold.  Good.  Karen recaps them and hustles back to Frank, sitting beside him on the floor where he’s crouched.  She thrusts a bottle towards him.  “Since you’re here, make yourself useful,” she says, probably more harshly than she intends.  Maybe.

Frank takes the bottle, carefully scooting his feet out in front of him so he can sit properly on the floor with her.  “Okay.  How do we do this?”  She’s surprised at how little argument he gives her.  She responds by scooping up the nearest puppy and holding it towards him, the little brown one, depositing him in his hand when he holds it out, head towards his fingers, butt towards his arm.  If she notices the way his fingers jump at her touch, she doesn’t show it, only scoops up a puppy for herself, all grey & white belly and stiffly flailing limbs, before hefting her bottle in demonstration.

“You keep them on their bellies, mostly horizontal.  Keep the bottle tipped up so they don’t get air bubbles,” she explains, enacting it as she describes, the starving baby latching onto the nipple so excitedly she has to lurch forward to keep hold of her.  She watches as Frank does the same, his eyes darting all over, taking in the tiny dog and his every movement.  He watches the puppy suckling in silence, a gentle smile tugging up one corner of his mouth, his eyes soft.  The undersized thing looks even smaller in his huge hand, its flailing paws completely contained in the confines of his fingers where they normally reach outside hers.

“They’re just like babies,” he says softly.  “Real babies, I mean.   Uh, human ones.  Look at ‘em, goin’ to town.  They always this wild?”

Karen nods.  “Yeah.  They, um…normally, if they’re all feeding from their mom, they’re in this big…scrum, almost.  All kind of climbing over each other to get a turn, and I think they knead at her to let the milk down.  Their little feet are on autopilot.”  She’s surprised to feel herself smiling, Frank’s wonder letting her forget for half a second how wretchedly tired she is because of these little milk monsters, instead remembering how sweet and innocent they are (when they aren’t waking her up in the middle of the night).

“So, how’d they saddle you with puppies?  The rest of the dogs all went to the shelters.”  His fingers flex as his puppy makes a valiant effort to get closer to the bottle that’s already in his mouth.

And just like that her fleeting good mood passes, the urge to dig at him too strong to resist.  “Did you get that from spying on me?”

Frank cocks an eyebrow at her.  “I read the article, Karen.”  Right.  The article that she wrote about the bust.  That was published in the paper.  That everyone could read.  _God_ , she was so tired.

“They, um…they weren’t part of the main raid,” she confesses.  Frank’s brow furrows in confusion.  “I…went back, a couple days later,” she explains haltingly.  “I don’t know why.  I was thinking of doing a follow-up piece on the space, maybe something that I could spin into a bigger series on the effects of city planning when these crime dens get cleared out and the building is left vacant and in disrepair.”  _Because why would I slow down when I have time to recover?_ she thinks.  She doesn’t even let the answering thought surface, the one about how the worry and the demons move in as soon as she’s still.  “When I went back, I found their mom whimpering half inside a wall, with this mess of puppies she’d moved in there.  I think she freaked out during the raid, or maybe before it, and they missed her because she was hiding.”  Her puppy is contentedly still, her legs finally relaxed as she gums at the nipple.  Karen pulls the bottle away a little as a test.  The puppy lets it go.  She glances at Frank’s puppy, sees him looking similarly peaceful, and nods her head.  “I think he’s just playing with it.”

Frank looks from her to the puppy, taking the bottle away questioningly.  His puppy lets it go, too, smacking his milky lips, the picture of satisfaction.  He chuckles at him.  “Good stuff, huh buddy?”  He moves to let the puppy loose back into the pile of his brethren but catches Karen setting the bottle down and turning her pup to hold against her chest, patting her back.  Frank mimics her, thumping his little back gently as he snuggles into his jacket.  “Burping, huh?”

“Yup,” she confirms.  Frank seems delighted by this revelation.

“Just like babies,” he marvels.  “What do you think, bud?  You got burps for me?  Better out than in, little man.”  The little sausage roll of brown bops forward with every pat, accompanied by a deep, comically full “thud” sound.  Karen has to smile at the way he has to tilt back, his hands so big that he can only support the pup from underneath and let gravity keep him against his chest, or he’d leave no surface area for patting.  Her little girl lets out a tiny puppy burp a split-second before Frank’s, a grin splitting his face in delight.  She’s never seen a man so enamored of a belch.  “Attaboy, good job buddy!  Good job,” he crows.  Karen grins, hands him a wet wipe.

“This part is not so much like babies.  When they’re this little they can’t… _go_ …on their own.  Normally the mom stimulates excretion by washing them, but since there’s no mom right now…”  She shifts her puppy, displaying her tailward to Frank, and holds up her wet wipe.  “You have to wipe them to stimulate the muscles.”  She demonstrates, indicating the space between the two relevant openings on her puppy, then on his.  “Here for girls, there for boys.  Gently.  Then you clean them off.”  Frank lifts his puppy, comically holding his rear end up to eye level to figure out what he’s doing.  He’s quiet while they wipe their respective puppies, almost pensive, until the desired result is achieved with another muttered, “Good job, buddy.”

Karen sets her little girl down on the near side of the blanket pile that serves as the puppies’ base of operations.  Frank makes to mirror her on his side, but she corrects him.  “You’ll want to put them down on this side, it has the heating pad.  At least until they dry.  They can’t stay warm enough on their own yet.”  He nods, shifting his puppy next to hers as she scoops up a new one, the black one with the white stripe down the middle of his nose.  Frank picks a tan one with a white belly and white socks.

“You know, it ain’t that different from babies,” he muses as they feed.  She looks up in question.  “The uh, the wiping.  I mean, you don’t have to help them go - shit, they do that fine on their own – but I swear, Frank Jr. coulda just peed out his entire body weight and had nothing new to drink, he’d still have a bladder full for me when I went to change him.  Every damn time.”  Karen laughs.  “Never Maria, just me.  Used to think about changing him with a blast shield over my face, like a welder or something.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” she starts, before she can even think about stopping herself.  “My brother used to do that, too.”  The words just come tumbling out of their own accord as Frank looks up with interest.  “I was too little to change him, but…you know, big sisters think they’re in charge of everything…so I used to go supervise whenever Mom changed him.  Learned to get good at ducking _real_ quick.”

He laughs at that with a murmured, “Yeah, I’ll bet,” completely oblivious to the fact that she had had no intention of talking about Kevin, that she feels like she’s frozen in some kind of nightmare, watching herself snicker with him at the memory like every thought of Kevin doesn’t still send needles into her heart.

“So, big sister, huh?  You the oldest?” he asks, all natural and casual-like, as though he doesn’t glom onto every secretive little bit of herself that Karen reveals, hawklike and sharp, afraid to miss them with how infrequent they are.

“Yeah,” she breathes, surprised to find that she still is, “it was just the two of us.”

 _Was._   Past tense.  Maybe some kind of falling out, Frank thinks, but she isn’t bitter when she says it.  No, _sad._   And she’s good, he’ll give her that, but there’s still a catch in her voice, the barest hint of a tremor.  Maybe not just in her voice, but it’s too hard to say with her puppy hell bent for election towards that bottle.  He wants to know that story, but he doesn’t need to ask her the nature.  He knows those tells, the ache of that loss.  Maybe not a brother, not like she means, and not how she lost, but he knows grief when he hears it.

Frank knows he has a reputation as a heartless motherfucker, but it’s a conscious choice he makes towards assholes who deserve it.  And maybe he’s turned it against Karen before, but only when it was important, when she needed to hear what he had to say.  This wasn’t one of those times.  He didn’t need to dig up her past right this second.  He’d seen her shaking like a leaf all the way up the stairs; shit, he wouldn’t even be here right now if he hadn’t seen her struggling the past couple weeks, he’d have still been hiding like a chickenshit, ashamed that he wasn’t here the last time she’d needed him.  So he doesn’t pull on that thread, knows she’ll pull it when she’s ready, when she can afford to unravel.

“That fits, you know.  Being the oldest.  All that go-getter responsibility shit.”  She looks up from burping her little tuxedo, a soft smile gracing her lips.  Relieved.  Mhmm, not ready.

She laughs softly, agreeing, turning her attention back to the puppy, letting that thread lie.  It’s safer than directly talking about Kevin, but it’s still too close.  The whole reason Kevin has been haunting her lately – _more_ , lately – is that he was her responsibility.  Maybe he should have been her dad’s – hell, maybe they both should have been her dad’s – but that’s not how it worked out, and she was never one to stand by and just let something happen when there was anything she could do to help.  That was the worst part of Mom dying: that there was nothing any of them could do except make promises she’d never know if they kept and find other ways to feel like they had any effect on life.  So she had promised her mom that she would look after Kevin and help her dad because they both knew he couldn’t handle everything himself, not knowing how hard it was going to be, not knowing how much she’d have to give up to make sure they were okay, never feeling like she had any other choice.  Sometimes the inevitability of what happened crushed her, the perverse idea that maybe she couldn’t blame herself because there was never any other way it could have gone offering no comfort.  That was the part that nagged at her ever since the vet first shoved the box of puppies back into her arms with a bag of supplies and a sheet of instructions: that responsibility for these eight new lives had been dumped unceremoniously on her shoulders, she had no alternative but to try to take care of them herself, and she was deathly afraid she would screw it up because she always did.  Every time they cried she dreaded the time she couldn’t figure out what they needed, that the few things she knew to try wouldn’t work, and the awful silence that would come when she failed them, these innocent little things who deserved so much better than what they got.

She sniffles, dabbing her nose with the back of her wrist as she sets her puppy down and grabs his sister, another ball of black & white patterned so much like a cow she’s taken to calling her “Moo.”

“You okay?” Frank asks quietly.  Of course, he noticed.  Of course, despite her best efforts, she’s going to break down like a basket case the first time she sees him in months.  She doesn’t know why she ever expected otherwise, since she ends up crying almost every time she sees Frank for one reason or another.

“Yeah,” she lies.  “Might be catching a cold.  Wasn’t bundled for the temperature today.”  She’s habitually sniffling and lying about how she’s dying inside.  Somehow trying to put on a brave face has her retreading the same territory she was desperately trying to avoid.

Frank knows better than to believe her, but whatever she’s fighting, she’s fighting hard, and he knows, too, that sometimes you can’t afford to face a thing when you still need to function.  If it has to out, it’ll out.  If she needs to hang on right now, he ain’t gonna push.  “Yeah, this spring is pretty crazy, huh? Weather’s been all over the place.”

“Yeah,” she breathes, relieved.  If she can just avoid talking about it, about Kevin or being a sister or responsibility or any of it, she thinks she can shove it all back down until…well, until another six weeks have passed and she can breathe again, the puppies all hopefully in new homes.  She turns the conversation towards Frank, getting the scoop on his new lease on life, albeit without some of the gory details.  He doesn’t particularly want to remind her exactly how much violence he’s capable of just now, and she doesn’t want to be reminded.  Karen tamps down on sharp pangs of jealousy when he talks admiringly of Agent Madani, the beautiful dark-featured woman ( _like maria)_ that was so fixated on him, whose life he saved again ( _something we have in common)._   She notes the way he dances around talking about Billy Russo any more than he has to.  She thinks she remembers the name from her research into his past – that they’d shared time in the Marines – but she never knew if they were rivals, if they were close, if they were anything more than teammates.  Frank’s voice simmers with a contained rage when he talks about the fight at the carousel that suggests they were something – first one, then the other; another betrayal to pile on the heap.  Her eyes prickle at that thought, too.  She always ends up crying when she sees Frank, for one reason or another.

Her nerves settle as they steer clear of talking about her, and the heart-wrenching cries of the puppies quiet one by one.  Karen relaxes into the novelty of having Frank in her living room, sitting on the floor with her, just talking, chatting like they’re old friends catching up.  He hasn’t made any move towards his backpack since he arrived, hasn’t indicated he’s in a hurry to get to any particular topic (hell, it’s an improvement that he even sat down this time), and she cautiously allows herself to believe that this might just be a social call after all (though whether it’s for her or the puppies, she can’t be sure).  She’s just starting to enjoy the comfort that being around him brings her when she notices that the puppies aren’t settling the way they normally do after they eat; instead, they’re milling uncomfortably, climbing on top of each other and starting to whine.  Just like that, her heart is back in her throat as she goes through the list of possible causes in a panic: they can’t be hungry.  They aren’t stopped up.  They’re clean.  They look well – no visible skin lesions or rashes.  But they’re clearly uncomfortable and they’re crying and she doesn’t know what’s wrong.  _Oh god, she doesn’t know what’s wrong._   She can’t get enough air.  At first it was only a few of them sounding discontent, but as those peel away from the pile more and more are joining the cacophony.

Frank’s hand is cupping the back of her head as he peers concernedly at her.  She thinks he’s trying to say something comforting to her but she’s distracted by the words that are pouring out of her own mouth, half sobbing.  “—can’t do this, I can’t do this, they’re my responsibility and I’m gonna fuck it up that’s what I always _do_.  It was my fault, he was my fault, he was my responsibility and now he’s gone and now they are too and I can’t I can’t I can’t—”  She’s not even making sense, none of it makes any sense and she doesn’t even mean to be saying any of it.  His other hand joins the first, cradling her cheek, turning her terrified face away from the puppies, trying to get her to look at him.

“Karen!  Karen.  Hey!”  She knows he’s trying to get her attention but she can’t seem to focus on him, can’t stop the vomit of guilt and fear she’s bringing up.  His thumb brushes through a track of tears she didn’t even know she was crying, rough then slick.  His hands are warm, on her face and under her own hands.  They help her focus, like a lifeline back to her own body.

“I flipped the car.  I was high and I flipped the car.  And then he was gone.”  This, she says consciously and on purpose, the words that had been bubbling on the tip of her tongue since she first confessed them that night in the basement of the church coming too easily after the seal had been broken.

She expects Frank to be disgusted, or shocked, or…something.  Anything.  But his eyes, tight with concern, just relax a little, like it makes him sad to hear it, and he says, “Hey.  Whatever happened, happened, but feeling guilty don’t bring ‘em back.”  He’s right.  He would be the expert.  It doesn’t do shit for the dead.  It doesn’t do shit for the living, either, but that doesn’t stop her from feeling it.

The little grey puppy has made her way all the way back over to them, whining, her stumbling baby paws digging at Karen’s ankle.  She recoils and she hates herself for it.  They need somebody but she’s the worst person for them.

“I’m gonna screw this up, too.” 

Frank’s face scrunches up in confusion.  “They’re just dogs, Karen.  They’ll be fine.   You just gotta help ‘em a little, that’s all.”

That’s when she realizes, with Frank stating it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world: that’s who she is to him, the person that helps.  She’d been the only person he’d let help him all through his trial, and she had helped him, as much as it was even possible to help with him throwing his own case under the bus – but not just legally.  She’d become a friend, an advocate, someone who cut through his bullshit when he hadn’t had anyone else, had isolated himself to protect the few people he had left in his life from his inevitable fall.  And then she’d helped him again when someone was digging up his demons, things he wouldn’t even speak aloud because to do so was to acknowledge their truth – the kind of horrible truth that even the Punisher of Hell’s Kitchen couldn’t stand to live with.  He can’t understand why she would feel so inadequate, why she would recoil from trying to assist these helpless, innocent little things.  He’s never looked at her and seen what so many others had in her life, that everything she touched turned to shit no matter what she did; the harder she tried, the bigger the pile.  She wants to be the person Frank sees when he looks at her, the person who helps and succeeds, the person who doesn’t just make a royal mess of everything.

Her eyes burn with the desperation of her desire to belong on that pedestal he puts her on, but as she blinks back her frustrated tears Frank just watches her solemnly, possibly oblivious, and hands her a squirming handful of puppy.

“It’s the cold snap.  They just wanna be warm, yeah?  It’s like you said: they don’t have their mom, so they need a bigger warm body than any a them got.  Just hold ‘em up by your chest, let ‘em crawl where they want.  They’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”  Karen nods bracingly, sniffling, as she brings her hands up tentatively to cup the wriggling little butterball as she blindly digs her way up from her breast bone to the curve of her neck, nestling under her hair and settling down.  She can’t see the tiny handful of grey, but she can feel her, like a living heating pad, still and quiet but for the swell of her round white-patched belly, velvety against her neck, and the occasional tiny sigh next to her ear.

Frank catches himself following the path of the grey puppy longer than he should, long enough to be conspicuous if Karen wasn’t sleep-deprived and out of sorts.  God, she’s beautiful, even with her eyes red, her face blotchy and her hair sticking up, but he should’ve come sooner.  She’s a mess. He’s seen her shot at, blown up, hit by a car and she’s never been like this.  If he wasn’t such a chickenshit she wouldn’t have gotten this bad.  A tug at his pant leg pulls him from his self-recriminations, the little tan and white puppy whining at his ankle disconsolately.  He shucks his jacket off (he sat down _and_ he took his jacket off this time) and scoops up the puppy, holds him against his own chest and pets him carefully until he settles, his big fingers stroking the length of his little back almost as soon as they start.  “Hey, baby.  You freezin’?  Looking for snuggle time?  Huh?  That what you need little guy?”  The rest of the litter wanders over, bitty and bow-legged, nuzzling into his or Karen’s legs or sitting and crying until one of them scoops them up.  She doesn’t look any less tired or any less frayed, but she does look calm, maybe freer for having her confession out, less anxious as they’re able to soothe the puppies’ cries.

“See?  Nothing to it.  Only problem now is your evening’s screwed.  Once you get puppies on you, that’s it.”  But his face cracks into a smile so big and so untroubled that Karen has trouble believing his words are really intended as any sort of serious warning.  He looks like a little kid who’s been told they have a snow day.  Maybe his mood is just that contagious, or maybe puppies can cure anything if you just take a moment to enjoy them, but Karen finds herself smiling tiredly, too.

 

* * *

 

They sit quietly, comforting their bossy baby dogs and chatting about nothing, about the puppies, or to the puppies when they stir, until peace descends again, on canines and humans alike.  Frank suggests takeout.  He’s starving and she can’t remember if she ate lunch today or if she’s remembering yesterday; the days have been blending together for a while.

“How about that Thai place down the street?  They’re good, right?” Frank asks as he thumbs his phone open.  Still using burners.  Maybe old habits are hard to break.

“Why, they’re one of my favorites!  However did you know about them?” Karen asks in mock surprise.  She’s brought dinner home from there at least three times in the last two weeks.

“Spying on you,” he answers archly.  He isn’t proud of it, but it’s hard to feel too down on himself with several furry infants nestled against his chest and Karen less than a foot away, safe and content and not completely mad at him.  He’s glad for the restorative effect they seem to have had on Karen, too.  Instead of lighting into him again, she just teases him back.

“So you’ve been watching me get takeout but you never tried them? You’re missing out!”

Frank snorts.  “Thought that might be more like stalking.  Gotta draw the line somewhere.  What’s good?”

“You don’t remember from _spying on me?_ ”

“Yeah, I remember the little white boxes real clearly.  I wasn’t close enough to _smell_ it, Karen.”  She chalks one point up to herself for the hint of irritation in his voice and relents.

“Their pad thai is amazing.  Fresh spring rolls are good.  Peanut sauce, curries, you name it.”  Frank grunts in acknowledgement, orders too much food, and pays when it comes, one-handed, so as not to disturb the puppies.  “There’s beer in the fridge,” Karen calls from the floor, the little tuxedo puppy in her lap weighing her down as effectively as a ten-ton weight.  She could use a drink after the day she’s having.  She wonders if Frank could use one, too, after having to deal with her meltdown, but his noncommittal “Sure,” suggests he isn’t too put out.  So he gets beers and bowls and they eat on the floor to continue to be available space heaters.  Frank ends up nesting his brood inside his hoodie to try to protect them from drips, the zipper pulled down to his belly button so the little things aren’t too stifled.  When Karen stares a little too long at the swath of tight undershirt he reveals, he worries they won’t be okay like that.

“Oh no, I think they’ll be fine.  It just looks…cozy,” she replies, shaking her head and belatedly trying to look away.  She really should not be picturing how it would feel, tucked up against his stomach, solid and warm, with the soft inside of his sweatshirt surrounding her.  She’s so tired that she’s finding it difficult not to stare in general, but that mental image is making it especially difficult not to stare at Frank and the way his clothes hug his muscular frame.  Things only get worse as they dig into dinner.  Maybe her favorite Thai place really is just that good, but Frank is eating like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted in his life.  She almost suggests he and the takeout get a room, but then she couldn’t watch his jaw work as he chews, see him suck every little errant bit of satay sauce off his fingers, or hear him moan in appreciation with every new dish he tries.  Karen is sure stronger women than she would have worse problems watching the pornographic display that is Frank Castle enjoying food; taking her compromised state into account, she considers it a small victory when she manages to get all her own food into her mouth without having looked at a single mouthful.

Belly full and limbs loosened, Karen is soaking up an ode to one of Frank’s favorite dinners out when she finally conks out, her head lolling against the couch as the excitement of badly missed company and sheer willpower no longer prove a match for carbs and exhaustion.  Frank sees it coming in the glassiness of her eyes and the slouch of her frame and catches her beer before it spills.  She still has two tenants on her, nestled on her shoulder and curled up in her lap.  His ears burn as he gathers them carefully up, her neck smooth where his fingers accidentally brush it, her jeans warm over her thighs.  He relocates all the puppies to the heating pad and builds the blanket up into more of a nest around them, then gets her awake enough to get her on her feet, but not much more.

“Okay, time for bed,” he says as he stands her up, careful to keep her steady with all the puppies so near underfoot.

“Can’t.  Need to b…oil bottles…feed at eight…” she mumbles in protest, her eyes still closed.

“I got that, don’t worry about it.  You need to sleep,” he rumbles.  He edges them carefully around the blanket nest and into her room, her arm over his shoulder and his around her waist as though helping a buddy get home after a little too much to drink.  None of his old drinking buddies ever smelled this nice, though.  He tries not to think about how her blouse slides over her side under his fingers, or the pleasant weight of her body against his.

“Nnn…need to feed them.  Can’t sleep,” she insists as he pulls back the covers and deposits her on her bed.  If he needs to spend a little extra effort extricating her arms from around him, he chalks it up to her exhaustion making her uncoordinated and sluggish.

“Yeah you can.  I’m taking the night shift,” he counters.  “Open your phone, gotta change your alarm.”  Karen does as he says, even as she makes noises of dissent.  He takes her phone from her and makes sure the nighttime feeding alarms are off and the workday one is on before setting it on her nightstand, then swings her legs up onto the bed and pulls the covers back up over her.

“Where…where you gon’ sleep?” she mumbles around a yawn.

“Couch looks pretty comfy.”

“But…need…pillow.”  She rolls onto her back, one hand tugging on his while the other pats the extra pillow on the other side of the bed.

“Okay,” Frank chuckles and takes the pillow.  He doesn’t see the point in arguing with her when she’s only semi-conscious, and it’ll be more comfortable than his backpack.  In the morning Karen will be relieved he misunderstood her suggestion in her delirium.  “I need blankets, too?”  She nods sleepily against her pillow and points across her room at the closet, propped open with a pile of dirty clothes.  She’s so adorable half-asleep it almost hurts.  Frank picks his way over through the chaos and pulls a blanket off the top shelf, tucking it under his arm with the pillow.  He looks back at Karen.  He’s trying not to be too doting; she is a grown woman, after all, and he isn’t really sure what he is to her or what she wants him to be, but she’s so tired she hasn’t settled herself under the covers and he doesn’t feel right leaving her for the night half exposed like that, so he picks his way back to the bed, setting his bedding down to tug the blankets up to tuck her in properly.  There’s a curtain of hair across her face like a veil that he draws back as best he can, keeps it from tickling her nose and sticking to her lips.  There’s a spot on her temple that’s begging for a goodnight kiss, but he doesn’t think he deserves to give it.  Instead he squeezes her shoulder and murmurs, “Sweet dreams, Karen,” before taking his bedding and shutting the door behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> I am on [tumblr](https://skullsandwhiteroses.tumblr.com/). Come spew your Kastle feels all over me.


End file.
